News

• June 30th, 2025 - Professor Zhang participated on a panel organized by the office of undergraduate research to share insights regarding graduate school preparation and application to summer undergraduate research students.
• May 30th, 2025 - The team from the University of Utah led by Professor Zhang receives nomination for the Gupta Family Endowed Prize for Innovation in ALS Care. The team also includes collaborators Dr. Mark Bromberg (neurology professor), Dr. Daniel Brown (CS professor), and Dr. Jake George (ECE & PM&R professor). The team was nominated for their contributions to improving care for neck weakness in patients with ALS using robotics.
• May 18th, 2025 - UWRL presented two RA-L papers at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the most prestigious robotics conference, in Atlanta, GA. Congrats to presenters Ian Bales and Joey Brignone. More information about the paper can be found in our publications.
• May 8th, 2025 - Congratulations to Adam Reinsch for successfully defending his M.S. Thesis.
• April 28th, 2025 - Congratulations to Kimia Khoshnami for successfully defending her M.S. thesis.
• April 9th, 2025 - Professor Zhang received the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award for the John and Macia Price College of Engineering from the Office of Undergraduate Research at the University of Utah.
• April 4th, 2025 - UWRL presented 8 posters at the annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain American Society of Biomechanics. Congratulate to the presenters Kimia Khoshnami, Joey Brignone, Robert Macdonald, Ana Alverez, Colin Rubow, and Ian Bales.
• March 6th, 2025 - Congratulate to Logan Lancaster for successfully defending his M.S. Thesis!
• January 31st, 2025 - two papers by UWRL members will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in May. Congratulations!
• December 10th, 2024 - The Summer Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR) is now open. UWR Lab will sponsor a project on creating wearable gaze sensing. See this post for more information. The application deadline is 1/26/2025.
• December 1st, 2024 - UWR Lab published a data descriptor paper on Nature Scientific Data which describes a dataset of paired head-eye movement collected in a virtual reality environment. Congratulations to authors Colin Rubow, Chia Tsai, Eric Brewer, Conor Mattson, Dr. Daniel Brown, and Dr. Haohan Zhang.
• November 22nd, 2024 - Congratulations to Joey Brignone and Colin Rubow for passing the PhD qualifying exams!
• November 20th, 2024 - Dr. Zhang to serve as a guest editor for a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering. The special issue focuses on computational modeling for neurorehabilitation.
• November 15th, 2024 - Two papers from UWR Lab were accepted by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. Congratulations to student authors Ian Bales, Joey Brignone, and Logan Lancaster. You can find these two papers on the Publication page.
• October 16th, 2024 - UWRL hosted a lab tour for undergraduate students, in partnership with the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) at the University of Utah.
• September 15th, 2024 - UWRL receives funding ($50k) from the Scoliosis Research Society to develop a six degree-of-freedom robotic system for surgical operations of injured cervical spine. This project is in collaboration with Dr. Macus Mazur from the Dept. of Neurosurgery at the University of Utah.
• July 23rd, 2024 - UWRL is awarded $150k by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for an R03 developmental grant.
• July 10th, 2024 - Ian Bales wins the Researcher of the Year Award from the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah. Congrats to Ian!
• June 6th, 2024 - UWRL hosts lab tours to students Ogden campus of the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind, organized by the Robotics Center, University of Utah.
• June 5th, 2024 - Ian Bales presented his paper titled "Design and Bench Demonstration of a Robotic System for Cervical Spine Deformity Surgery" at the 2024 International Symposium of Medical Robotics, Georgia Tech, Atlanta. Other coauthors on the paper include Adam Reinsch, Brandon Sherrod, Marcus Mazur, and Haohan Zhang.
• May 5th, 2024 - UWRL published a new paper in IEEE Transaction on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering (TNSRE)! Congratulations to the co-authors David Demaree (former MS student), Joey Brignone (current PhD student), and Dr. Mark Bromberg.
• April 16th, 2024 - A new paper on a novel robotic system for head-neck movements, coauthored by Ian Bales and Professor Zhang, is now available online on Nature Scientific Reports.
• March 19th, 2024 - UWR Lab research on promoting assistive technology for patients who suffer from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is featured on the ALS Association's website.
• March 17th, 2024 - Congratulations to everyone in the UWR Lab for six extended abstracts accepted by the Rocky Mountain American Society of Biomechanics. We will have three podium presentations and three poster presentations at the conference (April 4-5).
• December 8th, 2023 - UWR Lab received a Trailblazer award ($590K) from the National Institute of Health.